


Self Preservation

by Juniper200



Series: Selves [3]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Genre: Character Study, Other, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2013-09-04
Packaged: 2017-12-25 13:53:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/953876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juniper200/pseuds/Juniper200
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack stands his watch in turn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Self Preservation

He strides up the gangplank, limbs loose with habit more than drink. The sounds of the port – music from the taverns, the rumble of carts on cobbles, the cry of gulls too daft to sleep like sensible birds – melt away as he tunes his ear to the sounds of his lady – slack canvas sighing for the wind, timbers groaning for the outgoing tide, the silence of a crew gone to shore.

He’d be with them yet, hoisting his mug in celebration of the end of a cruise that left them all richer and none the worse for wear, but leaving Pearl alone for the night pains him almost as much as seeing her trapped in her moorings, only half-alive. So he'd stood his round (Small ale – after weeks at sea, a man likes to remember there’s more to the world than rum), left instructions that no man was to get himself killed, on pain of death, and come home for the night.

There is business to handle in the morning, in any case, and while there may have been a time when he could greet the dawn with three whores in his bed and fire left in his belly ... well, he could still do that, but he knows now that it’s easier to convert a cargo of stolen silk and tea into gold without a cannon-fire headache tipping the scales against him.

Out of the weather, he slumps to take off his boots in the chair next to the door that separates the rest of the great cabin from the small sleeping quarters. A lamp left lit on the writing desk still illuminates the bedchamber through the half-open door, and he takes in the scene, not ready to disturb Will and Elizabeth with his presence.

It’s a queer thing, keeping a married pair on board as pets. He’d expected them to be as anxious to disembark as any other sailors when they’d made land that evening. Not that he hadn’t been grateful the first time had Will drawn him aside and volunteered himself and his wife to stand guard while the others took to the taverns and the bawdy houses – it was always a messy job making the man draw lots for the duty.

He snorts. Some guards they’d made, curled together in the bed beneath the bridge, fast asleep. Of course, he can tell they hadn’t been asleep all that long; the air in the cabin is close and still heavy with the scents of their lovemaking.

It’s familiar but, lacking the notes of his own sweat and arousal, strange. Sometimes he comes close to forgetting that they’re not all married to each other. But Will and Elizabeth wear rings; he runs rings around them.

The rings had been a bone of contention at first; he’d scoffed when Will liberated the gold bands from the runaways’ first prize. A ring on a sailor’s hand is bound to get caught on a line, he’d said, and that’s the end of your finger. But Will had rolled his eyes at the showy emerald on his captain’s hand and slipped the ring on his wife’s delicate finger.

Delicate. It wasn’t the first word that sprang to mind when he sought to describe Elizabeth Turner – “hellcat,” “fiend” and “insatiable” jostled for that position – but there it was, all the same. She might fight like a tiger, plot like a scoundrel and fuck like a third-generation whore, but she’ll never escape her slender frame and aristocrat’s bones.

A life at sea has changed her, there’s no doubt about that. He regards the long, hard muscles of her legs twined in the sheets and the arms clutching her husband’s shoulder to her chest – those couldn’t belong to a Port Royal ornament who lifts nothing heavier than teacups and walks no farther than the privy.

She and Will came to him with naught but the clothes on their backs. The clothes are gone, but her back betrays her. He watches her daily as she works and sees her fight the ropes, the capstan, her own body. It wasn’t enough to leave polite society behind; she works as though she could scour it from her past. But then Marty outpaces her in the rigging or Anamaria carries a heavier load, and she is reminded that she was once Miss Elizabeth Swann, a lady, and she fights harder.

On a different night, he might peel her away from Will and tell her stories of London workhouses, death ships bound from the Gold Coast and nights in irons in Calcutta. He’d stroke her hair as she limned the brand on his arm with her tongue. He’d whisper that she can’t obliterate the governor’s daughter any more than he can scrape that letter off his flesh, that they may hate the past, but it’s theirs.

But tonight she is thoroughly her husband’s. Though he’d boarded the ship and entered the great cabin without so much as interrupting Turner’s snoring, he’s sure Will would snap awake the moment he lost the warmth of Elizabeth’s touch. His craft and his captain usually divert some of his attention from his wife, but with the forge cool and the other man absent from bed, Elizabeth is the focus of his attention, whether waking or sleeping.

Will’s brows tighten, as does his hold on Elizabeth. He turns a bit, shifting his weight and exposing the scar that mars one smooth shoulder. The blow had not been meant for him, had been hastily and clumsily deflected in the heat of a battle at sea. Had Will taken a moment to consider, he’d have seen the fight was well in hand, but that isn’t his way in times of danger.

He thinks William won’t stop charging in on others’ behalf unless he learns that rash action seldom pays. But how to bring that lesson home when the technique has always worked so smashingly for the boy before? He supposes Will thinks himself immortal after coming through explosions, the ministrations of the undead and a brush with the noose with no injury but a scratch on the hand. And that’s the difference between them: In the face off all evidence, Will thinks he can’t die, but the captain knows he can, has been given up for dead so many times that the specter is always close as his own shadow.

He knows that Will’s devotion, once earned, is fierce, and his man and his wife have that devotion in spades. Turner would jump through a wall of fire to save either of them. But as he watches the lad bury his nose in Elizabeth’s hair, he knows just the same that William’s first thought in times of danger will be of her. He doesn’t begrudge her that primacy; she’s Will’s wife, and that’s the natural order of things.

But what of him? No, he can take care of himself while William scoops up Elizabeth and plunges through Hell. But what of the day when he sees the Turners pinned to the desk, knives held to their throats? Who is he meant to save? They’re a matched set, suited for each other in the best and worst ways. Rescue the man and later let him break them both with his grief? Save the lass and leave her suspecting he’d become jealous, wanted her all to himself? Turn his back and harden his heart to their shared past, their dwindling future? The day, he’s convinced, will come.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, they say, and he knows this is what will be the end of them someday. From the first he has danced away from the idea, for while Will and Elizabeth are so close to his heart, can there be space for an enemy? Familiarity breeds contempt. They say that too, but what he fears is likely not what they mean.

With a start, he realizes that Will is awake, has been watching him brood over the two of them for who knows how long. He leers at the lad, and Will’s answering grin stokes a heat deep in his gut. He rises and slings his sword over the back of the chair, and the heat grows when Will takes Elizabeth’s ear gently between his teeth and teases her awake. Roused, she rises to her knees, sheets slipping away, and beckons him into bed.

The day will come, he thinks as he moves into their embrace, but not tomorrow. And probably not the day after, either.


End file.
